Our regular meeting will be held on
Monday 8th Oct
at the Harlequin pub on
Nursery Street in Sheffield where we are hoping to celebrate
with members old and new . We are also hosting a 30th
University event at the same venue on
Thursday 25th Oct
including a special
performance of Andrew Shepherd's wonderful play The
Fiddle and the Bow.

Our twins from the Sailors Beware
Tent are joining us for this special event and we are hoping
that fellow Sons can join us to help celebrate. You would be
most welcome. If anyone can make it along it would be great
if you could let us know (For details and to contact us see
Brats Tent Sheffield Facebook page).

Just had a bright idea.
Tent members across the UK, even the world, might
speak to local cinema managers to ask if they could
put up a poster advertising local
meetings.

In an area in an area
where there is no tent maybe put up a poster
advertising the Sons in general.

Possibly hand out flyers
to cinema goers.

Might be a bit of a
fantasy asking to say a few words just before the
film starts.

Melvin
McFadden

Untold story of Laurel
and Hardy - and the city sidekick behind their rise to
fame

from Birmingham Live
website

It's being billed as 'the untold
story of the world's greatest comedy act'.Set to open in the UK at the height of
the Oscar fever season, Stan & Ollie pairs Chicago-born
actor John C Reilly, as Oliver Hardy, with British star
Steve Coogan, as Stan Laurel.

Parts of the film were shot at the
Black Country Living Museum in Dudley and at the Old Rep
Theatre on Station Street in Birmingham.

But one key character who will be
missing from the movie is Brummie actor Charlie Hall - even
though he now has a city pub named after him.

Born in Washwood Heath in 1899,
Charlie made his way to Hollywood and ended up starring in
47 films with the kings of comedy.Today, he's still remembered in the
city thanks to the JD Wetherspoon pub called the Charlie
Hall, a former bingo hall on Barnabas Road,
Erdington.The last film
Charlie made with Laurel and Hardy was the 1940 release,
Saps At Sea.

The new movie is set years later -
which means Charlie is not in the list of
characters.

But the trailer has received the
thumbs-up from Laurel & Hardy expert John Ullah.He co-founded the Laughing Gravy Tent
in 1993, 40 years after a meeting between American mature
student John McCabe and Stan Laurel at the Birmingham
Hippodrome in 1953.As
well as becoming the talent-recognising, 1961 biographer of
the comedy duo, McCabe also founded Sons of the Desert- The
International Laurel & Hardy Society - in
1965.

Today, Birmingham's Laughing Gravy
Tent welcomes more than 100 members to its monthly meetings,
making it the UK's biggest branch of the Laurel & Hardy
Appreciation Society.

After watching the trailer, John
said: "As you can imagine, I am now eagerly awaiting its
release. Jeff Pope is a brilliant writer and Steve Coogan
and John C Reilly are superb as Stan & Ollie. As with
all films, they've had to invent a few things to make it
more interesting. For instance there was no argument between
them over Ollie's appearance with Harry Langdon in the film
'Zenobia'. In fact Stan sent Ollie a telegram to wish him
luck.

"But I would like to see the whole
film before I make a judgement, as trailers can sometimes be
deceptive. The film has been well received in the US, by the
various fans who have seen it. And hopefully it will
rekindle more interest in Laurel and Hardy."

Six years ago, Brewin Books
published John's biography of Charlie Hall, called This
Is More Than I Can Stand.

The book was launched at the
Charlie Hall pub on March 26, 2012 and its pages detail how
Hall also starred with everyone from Charlie Chaplin and
Buster Keaton to Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, Groucho
Marx, Alfred Hitchcock, Abbott & Costello and many
more.

The Stan & Ollie film
will premiere on October 21 with its leading stars appearing
at Cineworld, Leicester Square as the highlight of the
London Film Festival's closing night, before going on
general release in the UK from January 11,
2019.

Stan and Ollie
movie

I was looking forward to
this till now seeing the trail - honestly it looks
like one of those 'don't let the truth get in the
way of a good(!) story'.